At a book launch organised by Britain in Europe and the ‘Knowing our Rights’ project for Conor Gearty’s latest book, On Fantasy Island: Britain, Europe and Human Rights, the eminent human rights scholar and Matrix Chambers barrister delivered a passionate defence of the Human Rights Act and the UK’s European orientation, while blasting the government for Brexit and its attacks on the ECHR.

‘Brexit was underpinned by deplorable opportunistic populism’, and was bringing about ‘a move to explicit discrimination in the UK’, he said characteristically. ‘The ECHR was attacked as a proxy for the EU’, he criticised with equal rigour…